The best film of 2009, Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours follows three grown siblings as they reunite after their mother dies and leaves behind a country house overflowing with valuable art and antiques (on loan from the Musée d’Orsay). With its richly-detailed script and nuanced performances by Binoche and Berling, Summer Hours illuminates the private experience of loss, as well as the practical concerns of settling an estate, with remarkable insight.

Declared a national treasure by the Library of Congress, Killer of Sheep explores the L.A. ghetto of Watts in the mid-’70s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached from the psychic toll of working at an abattoir. Due to the expense of the music rights, Killer of Sheep was kept from distribution for three decades, until finally being restored and released in 2007.

Pep rallies. Gym class. Formals. The principal’s office. Home Ec. Home Ec? What do you miss most about high school?

America’s greatest living filmmaker, documentarian Fredrick Wiseman, is being treated to a year-long retrospective of his work at MoMA. High School, his second film, is a fascinating look not just at the rite-of-passage institution that every American teenager goes through, but also at the mores and gonzo-gender politics of the 60s.

Preceded by:Powers of Ten(USA/1977/9 min)Directed by Charles and Ray Eames

What better way to celebrate the tenth Choice Cuts, than with Charles and Ray Eames’ sci-non-fi short. Starting on a couple of picnickers the camera pulls back (and back and back…) by powers of ten each second, before zooming back in the reverse direction. Truly a wonder, and better than any video you were made to watch in science class, unless, of course, you had a really hip science teacher who showed it to you.

Two Solutions for One Problem(Iran/1975/4 min)Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

This charmer about two schoolboys from Iranian auteur, Kiarostami, wryly presents a problem and offers two solutions. Which is better? You decide.